A Dying Light
by IronSaint98
Summary: A platoon of ODSTs drop into a city under siege by the Covenant. They and five thousand Marines are all that stands between three-hundred thousand civilians, and a Legion of blood thirsty Covenant. Blood, pain, and death is the currency of a soldier and they spend it all. (Oneshot)


A Dying Light

The pod is quiet as the _Unbroken Dawn_ ploughs its way to the drop point. His breathing is his only companion while in the pod. His SOEIV, his steed and coffin, wraps around in beyond even his armor as a titanium shell. The HUD of his helmet is a comforting view for him as it has been for the last four years of his career. His hand taps on the grip of his holstered M6C in tune with a song in his head just trying to distract him from the distinct possibility of this being his final drop.

"_Thirty seconds to drop people. Make your piece and shove a cork in your ass!"_ The Lieutenant, fresh out of the academy, orders in a playful tone. As if this is all a game not just another episode in the long nightmare of the death of their species. He doesn't realise that the only thing that matters is the number of civvies that get to the shuttles before the Covenant overwhelm them, and the number of Covie bastards you take with you to the next life. He might learn if he lives through this drop. If not...there's a long list of dead junior officers that just don't get it yet, and a longer one of the soldiers dead from their mistakes. He shakes off the defeatism. He's an ODST, a Helljumper. Piss fire, chew barbed wire, kill anything that ain't green. A lean, mean, killing machine.

Adrenaline spikes through his body as the pod shakes slightly, a sign that the launch rails are moving him into position. The pod stops when the curve of a new world comes into view. All blue oceans, green hills, a silver city...and four Covenant ships glittering in the distance. Hatred burns in his chest as the countdown winds to zero. The clamps release his pod and he falls. Like hundreds of thousands before him. He falls. His stomach slams into the back of his throat right before his balls do the same. If he lives through the impact there's ten-thousand blood thirsty aliens that would _love_ to rectify that. In spite of that, he smiles. The platoon's channel plays a song from five-hundred years ago fitting the strains, and madness, of their job.

_Through the fire and the flame_

_We carry on!_

Closer and closer the world grows until the horizon disappears behind a veil of clouds and the shaking begins. A bone rattling shaking, he knows what a dirty martini feels like. That thought makes his grin stretch wider. The clouds part to reveal the skyline of Adman Prime's sole city and the fires that wreath most of it. Below him, even though he can't see it, is the spaceport where three-hundred thousand people are being loaded onto shuttles to the transports that the Navy is bleeding to keep alive. And the place where five thousand Marines are dying to keep safe for just long enough. The place where he could very die himself. He pushes that thought back with all the others and braces for the retro-burn. Jets in the base of the pod flare to life to slow it to a slightly more sane velocity for impact.

The most common description for that event is that it feels like a mule kicks you in the ass. An apt description even if you don't know what a mule is. His teeth rattle in his skull and he closes his eyes knowing what comes next. No manner of padding is enough to keep the landing from hurting. Once more he is thankful that he wears a mouthguard to keep from biting his tongue off: one of the few lessons that are _not_ regulation throughout ODST candidacy. The impact is like a semi slamming into you at ninety miles an hour...into your ass. It hurts. He grimaces and lifts his helmet enough to spit the mouthpiece out then hammers the pod door release. It lifts up and he bursts free ripping his MA5D free in the same motion.

Instinct and experience guides his feet to the first piece of cover he can find. His ears deaf to orders until he can be sure to live long enough to hear them.

"—_econd squad will hold the main terminal with third on their right. Keep it tight people, Covies are inbound!"_ The Lieutenant's voice is now flat and professional. Devoid of the playfulness that characterized most of his interactions with the senior enlisted of the platoon. Not _his_ platoon, but _the_ platoon. It won't be his until he proves himself. An unspoken rule among the Helljumpers to be sure that good officers survive, and the bad ones don't. He doesn't hesitate and takes his squad to the immediate right of the rail station. The mag-rail is silent and empty but for the automated announcements for the evacuation and the warning signs across every display. A sight that he has seen _far _too many times.

"Feral on me, setup the SAW in that window. Deadshot find a spot somewhere up top and take who you need. Rest of you grab some real estate," he barks as they melt into the shadows of a demolished cluster of confection stands and a parking garage. Burnt out cars provide most of their cover. Metal is more durable than plaster and wood after all. His VISR flares highlighting the advancing forms of a Covenant Lance. An Elite minor heading a group of five Grunts and a trio of Jackals with their broad, yellow energy shields. He ignores the Jackals as he settles in behind a yellow civvie 'hog, resting his rifle across the hood as he waits.

The Lance continues forward without caution, a second and third appearing behind them. A full platoon's worth of murderous aliens. Poor bastards. Deadshot, Feral squad's marksman, takes the first shot with his DMR. One of the Jackals drops with a squawk and a flash of bright purple blood escaping the side of his head. The Covenant Lance pauses in shock. A rookie mistake.

"Drop 'em." He puts action to words. Gunfire roars from the shadows shredding the first Lance in an orgy of lead, bright blood, and alien screams. Music of a kind that can be found nowhere else. The other two Lances get in gear quickly enough to only lose half their Grunts and dive into cover. Blinding plasma and glowing crystal needles being flying back at the Helljumpers. The humans simply hunker down and wait for the opening fusilade to die down as it always does.

"Sarge, Bruiser squad is shifting a few guys our way it looks like!" Morenty reports from his position behind a concrete pillar that is swiftly beginning to glow brighter and brighter.

"Copy that! Let's get their attention, 'nades on three!" he calls back and rips a frag grenade from his harness. A quick press of the button on top primes it and he chucks it to where he last saw a Jackal with a Particle Rifle. The bird squawks loudly and leaps away from the grenade and right into his MA5D's sights. Armor piercing rounds make short work of the light chestplate covering the bird's torso. The grenades explode catching the first Elite minor with the edge of the blastwave and popping his shield. Deadshot puts him down with a trio of rounds to the chest that simply punch through the blue armor like it wasn't there. High melting point doesn't necessarily coincide with tensile strength. The Sergeant's rifle bucks against his shoulder as he adds his firepower to the SAW's to pummel a second Elite's already weak shield and siles grimly when the tall alien falls to the ground as a shredded mess.

"'Nade incoming!" Jordan warns from behind him. He doesn't hesitate and leaps away from the 'hog. A hydrogen fuel cell tends to be highly flammable so being near it when a plasma grenade goes off is a bad idea. He grunts as the street greets him like an ex-wife: with a slap to the face with divorce paperwork. A roar of primal fury alerts him to the third Elite before he see it. Instinct throws him backwards and away from where he was laying just a heartbeat before. Just in time to avoid a glowing energy sword to the heart. The Major's four mandibles splay wide as he roars in fury and lungs again ignoring the 7.26mm rounds peppering his shields from Jordan and Corporal Singh's MA5Ds. Instead of dodging, freezing, or firing his weapon like many would he tucks his shoulder and charges. Eighty-six kilos of ODST slams into one-hundred kilos of pissed off alien swordsman. Who is also off-balance.

The alien falls to the side with a startled grunt. He ignores the pain in his shoulder and brings his rifle to bear holding down the trigger until it clicks empty and the alien's skull is little more than a smear on the pavement. A sudden blow to the side of his helmet knocks him to the ground with a resounding, "Fuck!"

"_Sergeant you good? Talk to me!"_ Corporal Singh shouts in the squad-channel, a note of panic penetrating the otherwise professional voice. He groans and rolls behind a second 'hog to remove his helmet and inspect the damage. A long furrow is dug into the alloy decorated with a few tiny shards of purple crystal. He grunts again, satisfied that it will still do the job, and puts it back on.

"Took a glancing needle to the dome, rattled me but I'm green. They pulling back yet?"

"_Affirmative. I think the LT has new orders for us."_ The veteran can hear the relief in his subordinates voice. A quick eye-blink changes over to the platoon channel.

"_Second platoon we're pulling back two blocks to 52nd street. We'll link up with the Marines there and hold until evac arrives. Second squad on point, third bring up the rear."_ The Sergeant huffs and signals his squad to form up, abandoning their battered positions with nothing more than a sunburn or two from near misses. And his possible concussion, he silently concedes.

"Squad Feral copies."

* * *

_**Three hours later.**_

In near twenty years of war the UNSC has set every kind of record for a world falling. From shortest to longest. This world looks to be a four hour world. After three hours of fighting Feral squad has been reduced to five out of twelve members: 'Deadshot' Grant, Singh, Jordan, 'Stitches' Reymose, and Sergeant Tillard. The LT is dead after a sniper nailed him while he was shouting orders, and the company or so of Marines that was deployed to hold the park is reduced to a single understrength platoon like the ODSTs. The once beautiful park, a place where a family could come for a day and relax, is a corpse strewn and blasted wasteland. Wrecks of Covenant tanks and Ghosts are scattered across the sidestreets and in the park proper where they were caught in the open by Spnkr rockets used by the Marines, or a flight of unmanned drones that were dispatched from the fleet overhead.

Tillard sighs heavily as he pilfers a dead Marine's ammo pouches for a pair of fresh magazines, all the while listening to the Covenant regrouping at the other end of the park. His legs feel like lead as he jogs back to the pile of sandbags with a melted heavy machine gun that the remnants of his squad is posted behind. Fifteen more minutes. That's all they need. Fifteen more minutes until the last shuttle is loaded and on its way so that the Pelicans can come and pick them up. They won't last five. A low chanting begins building on the wind, a chanting that anyone who survives a Brute assault would recognise.

"Get ready for another round boys cause here they come," he sighs and props his rifle on the sandbags. They wait, peering through the columns of smoke and smoldering flames. The Sergeant flashes his VISR to highlight the advancing Lances and bites off a curse. Six Chieftains are leading the assault with Gravity Hammers humming in their paws. The few marksmen left to the defenders begin firing measured shots picking off whatever leadership they think they can get away with. A pair of Marines with sniper rifles are laid down in the bushes slightly above the staggered line on the hill. Not much cover up there so they simply huddle up against the base of the tree and pray. Two Chieftains drop with a sizeable hole in their heads before the others give the charge order.

"Open fire!" Tillard barks and suits words with action taking careful aim and firing a burst into an exposed skull dropping one of the Brutes. Grunts run alongside them firing their plasma pistols and needlers wildly. They don't need accuracy just a high volume of fire. The Marines are consummate riflemen: every burst has a life ending at the end of it, the groups are tight and accurate for the most part...for now. The whole two-hundred Brutes charging them changes that _real_ quick. The Sergeant scowls when half his magazine is required to pop a Brute's shields only for Deadshot to put a round in the thing's skull as soon as it does.

"Grenades!" he bellows and primes his own charge. The last grenades they have sail through the air and detonate in a wide half-circle spread just wide enough to shatter the momentum of the charge for a second or two and allow them to pepper the stunned enemy without fear of reprisal. It's not enough. A trio of plasma rounds turn the sandbags beneath his rifle to glass in an instant and splashes a glob onto his forearm. Searing pain makes his arm seize up and attracts Stitches' attention.

"Hold still! Hold still!"

"I'm fucking trying!" The squad's medic pries the still glowing hot piece of glass off of his arm with his knife before picking his rifle back up. Together they put down one of the now unshielded Chieftains. The massive ape roars his fury as a score of armor piercing rounds rip through his chest and then throat. They're too close. The first one rips into a tattered Marine squad as by some twisted turn of fate they all ran out of ammunition at the same time. The bayonet on his spike rifle splits one man in half and his fist pounds another flat. Tillard curses and fires a burst into the Brute's skull dropping it. But another Brute reaches the lines, then another. Gunfire and screams compete with the savage howling of the Brutes as the human furiously back pedal to gain some breathing space weapons firing on full auto. Tillard drops his MA5D after the last magazine runs dry in the last Chieftain's face and draws his M6C.

The heavy pistol cracks again and again helping Deadshot end one brute. The last three rounds in the magazine rip off another Brute's hand when it reaches for Jordan who fires the last five rounds in his SAW's drum into its throat leaving it to choke on its own blood. Tillard curses as he reloads, slamming his final magazine home. More pain flares along his left shoulder when a plasma round burns through the plating but adrenaline dulls the pain. For a while. A sound rises over the sound of the dying Marines and their killers. A blessed sound: screaming turbines and the roar of UNSC Anvil rockets streaking in to slam into the Covenant lines.

30mm chain guns roar to life spitting thunder and death and shredding the Brutes where they stand. Missile pods scream death into the shocked Covenant ranks shattering what cohesion they maintained. The ground shakes beneath his feet with each percussive impact of the missiles making it seem like a wrathful god is swatting the Covenant from his land with the back of his hand. Too exhausted to cheer the remaining Marines and ODSTs sag to the ground, twenty left where over two hundred stood just a few hours before. Acceptable numbers for holding the line and saving hundreds of thousands. A mind numbing fact for those involved. Hours later as the medics check him and rest of his squad over in the med-bay of the _Unbroken Dawn_, he allows himself to relax ever so slightly.

He made it through another drop. The Covenant died more than them. A victory for the losing side. A grim smile stretches across his face as he and the four others of his squad settle into their racks, alone in the berthing that once housed the whole platoon.

"Hell is gonna be packed when we get there. _We_ made sure of it."

* * *

**A/N: For those of you who **_**actually **_**will read this I admit it ain't my best effort but I knocked this together in an afternoon. Just a plot bunny that needed out and maybe if I get a few reviews asking for more I'll do a longer story on Feral squad and Sergeant Tillard. Chow.**


End file.
